[zericosmic]

To me the most egregious one is the Vale.

 My guess as to the reason why that is, is that the Vale is an adventuring hub rather than just an Adventuring guild, likely the biggest adventuring hub on Korvara, the NPCs and why they'd be so wildly different is to represent adventurers coming in from all corners of Korvara to make some dosh, rather than them being vale members.

Right, but that doesn't change the fact that nowhere else has this kind if NPCs in general. I think there's that one other guild in telegrad that has it... Anyway, point is, going by that logic you could have all kinds of places with NPCs in them.

For instance you could have gamblers in the casino, dock workers in the docks, people drinking in the Meiaquar Venue... You could put some members of various tribes around duyuei, farmers in the telegrad fields, etc.

But that's not a good idea even if it makes sense. So even though it makes sense in character for the vale npcs to be varied, that doesn't make it a good thing for the game as a whole.

I do think NPCs make the world feel empty. It detracts from the importance of player characters. Imo it should only be used to denote the presence of a force, to signify that an area is protected.

I mean given how PC adventurers are, I don't think it's odd for the vale NPCs to wear unique looking stuff.. Nor do I really think them looking unique is anything to particularly care about.

And you could. If your character possesses a location, you can just ask for them. And there are members of Duyuei tribes already placed around certain parts of Duyuei, namely near the arena and some farmers down south. Whether NPCs exist in these places is down to the player preference of who's controlling the location.

I'm not really a big fan of the NPCs either though, if they exist, i'd prefer them to be interactable to some degree, to be more than just set-dressing, but as it is that'd likely result in a lot of work for something which would lose its novelty rather quickly.